Big Wave Surfing Book Takes Two More Business Book Awards from Los Angeles Book Festival; Also Voted Overall Winner in Small Business Book Awards Sponsored by Online Publication, Small Business Trends

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn., Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Amazon best-selling book - Big Wave Surfing: Extreme Technology Development, Management, Marketing and Investing - was named the 2011-2012 winner in the How To category by the Los Angeles DIY Book Festival. It also took honorable mention in the business category for the Los Angeles Book Festival. Winners are slated to be honored at their annual awards show held March 3rd at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, CA.

At another annual industry event the Big Wave Surfing Book showed its staying power with the public as it was voted overall winner for best book in the 4th annual Small Business Book Awards.

Now in its fourth year, the Small Business Book Awards enables the small business community to nominate, show their support for, and vote on their favorite business books. The top 10 winners were selected by readers based on number of votes and Big Wave Surfing took the crown and the most votes this year as the Best Small Business Book of 2012. It was also voted the best overall in the category of technology. Voting started on February 1, and lasted more than two weeks. Preliminary results indicated that a record number of votes - more than 46,000 - were cast this year. In last year's Awards, over 41,000 votes were cast by the community.

The Small Business Book Awards initiative is produced by Small Business Trends, an award-winning online publication, which along with its sister sites serves over 4,000,000 small business owners, stakeholders and entrepreneurs annually.

These new announcements solidify Big Wave Surfing as one of the top business books of 2011-2012. With nine awards in 2011 alone, and three more to start 2012, Big Wave Surfing has confirmed its popularity with reviewers and readers alike. When it launched in late March it stayed on Amazon's #1 ranking for Business and Investing as well as Computers and Internet for most of the week.

According to the author, Dr. Thurber, "I wrote Big Wave Surfing as an analogy to show how disruption causes big waves to form and that these disruptions will have far-reaching economic, political and social effects.

"As the book points out, it's critical to be able to spot these big waves forming. We talk about them from a technological perspective, but it's clear that technology is rapidly altering the landscape and that the landscape is rapidly altering technology."

Thurber continues, "We live in interesting times. Our true measure will be how well we adapt not only to the speed of change, but the results of these changes. I believe my book will help people begin to understand and deal with these changes. I have spent a lifetime in the computer business, a business that can change radically every 12-18 months, sometimes sooner. We are talking about disruption, and often extreme techniques are needed to deal with this disruption."

Thurber says like the physical surfers who ride the big waves at a beach like Mavericks these new concepts won't "always be pretty and in fact it may be downright dangerous. There will be winners. There will be wipeouts and losers. But if we don't boldly embrace the next wave, the innovation economy, then profound structural changes will occur in American society."

About the Author:

Kenneth J. Thurber, Ph.D., is a renowned computer architect and has developed technology and systems worth billions of dollars. He developed the concept of "technology big wave surfing" to empower readers to understand and harness the opportunity of an ever-changing technological marketplace.